xii, 241 pages ; 25 cm

"What is the meaning of Africa and being an African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism? These are the kinds of fundamental questions that this book addresses. V.Y. Mudimbe argues that the various discourses themselves establish the worlds of thought in which people conceive their identity. Western anthropology and missionaries have introduced distortions not only for outsiders but also for Africans trying to understand themselves. Mudimbe goes beyond the classic issues of African anthropology or history. He says that the book attempts an archeology of African gnosis as a system of knowledge in which major philosophical questions recently have arisen: first, concerning the form, the content, and the style of Africanizing knowledge; second, concerning the status of traditional systems of thought. He is directly concerned with the processes of transformation of different types of knowledge."--Book cover

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-232) and index

INTRODUCTION --- I. Discourse of power and knowledge of otherness --- II. Questions of method --- III. The Power of speech --- IV. E.W. Blyden's legacy and questions --- V. The Patience of philosophy --- Conclusion: The geography of a discourse

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